Spanish street artist PEJAC visits Tokyo

Pejac is a Spanish artist who’s been getting a lot of attention with his simple, yet effective street art paintings and installations. Cleverly mixing elements of visual illusion with universal symbols and imagery, his works are painted not only all over Spain, but also France, UK, Turkey and Russia, and are going viral thanks to such supporters as Greenpeace or Saatchi gallery.

As a fan of Asian culture, he recently made a trip to the “Far East” during which he visited Hong Kong, Seoul and finally, Tokyo. During his stay in Japanese capital he created 4 pieces, mostly incorporating iconic traditional symbols into his unpretentious and powerful visual language.

Probably most popular piece from this series was “Everyone is an Artist”, a simple painting showing a cleaning lady emptying a water bucket onto a sidewalk. The twist in this piece is that the water coming out of the bucket is represented with Hokusai’s infamous Great Wave. Though the original message of this work was to show appreciation to working women worldwide, it can be seen as critique towards Japanese westernization and evident disconnection from their traditions and culture.

Similar to this work, “Seppuku” shows a Samurai performing ritual suicide or Harakiri, by using a branch of Sakura (cherry blossom). This image combining two strong, opponent symbols, originally painted on a canvas, and was released as Pejac’s first limited edition print, but it got a whole new perspective and meaning placed in a lonely alley of Shibuya.

Finally, probably most provocative work was a sculptural installation called “Fin Soup” which was placed on a sidewalk of Shibuya showing shark fins coming out of the concrete with noticeable human bites on them.

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